Choice and Change
by Marg Hammerman
Summary: Michael is back in Miami for the first time since he and Fiona nearly died with their hands joined over the trigger of a suicide bomb during the stand-off with Vaughn's team. Michael's only got a twenty-four leave, but in the world of Burn Notice, that's plenty of time for anything to happen, and everything to change. Set between the end of Season 4 and the start of Season 5.
1. Prologue

**Title:** Choice and Change

 **Summary:** Michael is back in Miami for the first time since he and Fiona nearly died with their hands joined over the trigger of a suicide bomb during the stand-off with Vaughn's team. Michael's only got a twenty-four leave, but in the world of _Burn Notice_ , that's plenty of time for anything to happen, and everything to change. Set between the end of Season 4 and the start of Season 5.

 **Author's Notes:** Hello, and welcome to my second _Burn Notice_ story! As it says in the summary, this story takes place between the end of Season 4 and the beginning of Season 5, just before Michael and the CIA get to work hunting down the people on the NOC list. There's a big (i.e. six month) time gap in there that I thought would be interesting to play with and re-imagine, while providing a bit more emotional closure to the dramatic end of Season 4.

Some of the backstory stuff in this fic is taken from episodes of the show, while other things are invented by me; if you want to know which is which, feel free to drop me a line. For the purposes of the story, I also made one little, hopefully forgivable change to show canon; whereas the show has Michael cooking for Fiona on his last day in Ireland, I've got it the other way around. Overall: I'm hoping the story had a good _Burn Notice_ -y mix of humour, action, and feels—but you'll have to judge for yourself :)

Shout-out to all the other writers, reviewers, and fans keeping this wonderful show alive—I wouldn't be writing without your fabulous inspiration.

Review if you like, but most of all… enjoy!

 **Disclaimer #1:** My heroes always practice safe, consensual sex.

 **Disclaimer #2:** I don't own _Burn Notice_ , and I don't get compensated (in a financial sense) from fanaticizing about its world and its characters.

 **Prologue**

 _Eleven Years Ago…_

The last day of the best year of Michael Westen's life was unseasonably warm and sunny. It was early evening when he finally made it back to the north side of Dublin from his meeting with his handler in the city centre, but the late April sun still lingered, drawing after-work crowds from the pubs out onto the narrow, cobbled streets. It was an almost festive atmosphere, surreal in its inappropriateness—at least for Michael. It was the last day of the best year of Michael Westen's life—which meant it was also the worst day.

As he walked, he did his best to acknowledge the friendly glances of people he knew by sight, if not always by name. It was an instinctual gesture; every face was a blur, each simple word of greeting muffled and nonsensical. To the same degree that he was oblivious of his surroundings, he was hyper-aware of his body. Each step felt stiff, his joints petrified by a stifled desire to run; he had to bury his hands in the pockets of his jacket to hide the nervous, erratic flexing of his knuckles.

Six blocks from Fiona's flat, he bought a large bunch of white tulips from a street vendor. He was moved by the relevant symbolism of the flowers, whose simple, natural beauty signalled the dependable miracle of rebirth. Two blocks from Fiona's flat, he discarded the flowers in a rubbish bin, disturbed by his sentimentality and frightened by the thought of revealing it so obviously to Fiona. Yet he immediately realized that discarding the flowers was nearly as dangerous as purchasing them. His skin burned with the strange looks he garnered upon tossing the flowers in the bin, from an older woman in a plaid shawl and a man in his twenties wearing fluorescent orange headphones. The terrifying reality of his emotional unbalance thudded in his chest; it was as though he'd thrown all his training away in the bin along with the flowers.

He hesitated only briefly at the front door leading up to Fiona's second-floor flat. After the incident with the flowers, every second felt like an eternity; he imagined dozens of eyes watching him from the upper-floor windows of the adjoining buildings, wondering why it was taking him so long to open the door to his own home.

Shoving the key into the lock, he began his final journey up the familiar narrow stairwell with the peeling yellow wallpaper. At the top of the stairs, he paused for a longer moment in the privacy of the hallway. For thirty seconds, he contemplated turning back the way he'd come. This time, however, his training won out. If he left without seeing her, she'd think he'd been captured or killed. Fiona needed to see and know that he'd left of his own volition—even if it wasn't true.

Finally, Michael raised his fist to knock on the chipped green paint of Fiona's door.

"Fiona?" he called, speaking in Michael McBride's Irish brogue. "It's me. Can I come in?"

There was a brief shuffle of movement before the door swung open, greeting Michael with the smell of cooking and Fiona's face, eyebrows raised in a question under her shaggy bangs.

"You don't have to ask, y'know."

"I know. But I wanted to."

She continued to eye him suspiciously for a moment, then decided to tease him. Performing a sweeping bow with one arm, she opened the door wider and declared, "Won't you please come in, Michael McBride."

Michael managed a slight smile as he stepped past her into the flat. He'd barely made it over the threshold when Fiona slammed the door behind him and seized his jacket in both hands. With improbable strength, she threw him back against the closed door. For a split second, he wondered if she knew, half expecting her to knee him in the groin or strangle him; he'd already decided not to fight back, to take his punishment while apologizing through a bloody mouth. But then Fiona's lips covered his, and he could only thank her.

The wave of tension that had peaked at the sight of Fiona's door came crashing down at the reality of her body pressed against his, her strong, small hands tearing at his clothes and flesh. Michael was swallowed in the deluge; he clung to Fiona like a drowning man to a life raft, sucking her lips and tongue like her body contained his last reservoir of air.

He reached under the pockets of her jeans and she jumped into his grip, throwing her legs around his lower back. His lips stayed locked to her mouth and throat as he carried her stumblingly toward the couch, dropping his own body first into the sagging cushions and pulling Fiona down on top of him.

His hands clawed at Fiona's sweater as hers wrestled with the hardware on his jeans. The frantic scramble to nakedness ended with him sitting upright against the arm of the couch as Fiona straddled him, each of them with one foot on the floor. Michael's face was nestled in Fiona's breasts when her warmth encased his own. At first, he surrendered to her rhythm. But soon they shared a furious harmony, her breasts slapping against his cheeks as she scraped her fingernails through his hair and moaned toward the ceiling. Her short, sharp nails tore a jagged path up his spine as she gasped and shuddered around him; he lost himself a moment later, clenching hands filled with her hair as he bared his teeth into the hard centre of her chest.

Michael fell backwards and Fiona went with him, her cinnamon brown hair falling in a wave across his shoulder. He cupped her shoulder blade and breathed along with her residual, pulsing heat, too sated to dread the inevitable separation of their bodies. For a few precious moments, he forgot it was the last time he'd ever hold her—that in a few short hours, he'd only have the memory of her lithe curves and lavender shampoo. As reality crept up his spine and made a heavy home in his heart, he realized that even those memories would fade over time; eventually, he'd remember the fact of her smell, but not the smell itself. Years from now, that's all Fiona would be to him—a collection of facts, filed between Serbia and wherever he went next.

Fiona finally shifted in his grip, propping herself up on his chest. Her hazel eyes glittered as she gazed at him, her flushed cheeks rounded by a content-but-playful smile. Michael struggled to corral his own features. He told himself to return her happiness, but couldn't tell if he succeeded. The flood of passion had almost completely drained away, marooning him in the desert of reality.

"Welcome home, Michael Westen," she purred.

Michael swallowed, forcing down a tightness that was more than thirst.

"It's good to be home," he managed, speaking in his American accent. Since Fiona had discovered his real identity, he'd tried to speak in his true voice whenever he was sure they were alone. Dropping his cover wasn't wise, even within the confines of Fiona's flat. But Fiona was the one woman who frequently made him abandon his wisdom. His true voice had become a symbol of their intimacy, a sanctuary from the many layers of lies that ensnared everything else. For Michael, that sanctuary was already shattered, but Fiona needed to believe it was intact.

"How was your meeting?" she asked.

"Fine," he lied. "Routine."

Fiona nodded carelessly, her easy, unexpected trust destroying the final pieces of his already broken heart.

Using his chest as a springboard, Fiona hopped off the couch and onto her feet.

"Now that we've had desert," she said, bending all the way over to collect her bulky grey sweater off the floor, "I guess we should have dinner."

By the time Michael had reached his own t-shirt and jeans, Fiona was buttoning her fly and jogging toward the kitchen.

"Did you cook?" he asked.

"I made lamb stew," Fiona called from the kitchen. "My mother's recipe. You're going to love it."

Michael wasn't hungry, but he ate anyway—because of the trouble Fiona had gone to, and because he couldn't afford to arouse her suspicions. He told her the stew was delicious, and he wasn't lying; Fiona didn't cook often, but when she did, she was good at it, her chemical and mechanical skills translating easily into less destructive ventures.

The rest of the evening passed in the same surreal, sickening blur as his walk home from the city centre. Michael made sure Fiona drank enough red wine to make her drowsy, and used his own tiredness as an excuse to bow out of any additional sexual escapades. It was a miracle Fiona didn't try to push the issue; his reluctance was rare, and usually, it only encouraged her.

Michael pretended to sleep until the early hours of morning, waiting until he was certain Fiona was well and truly asleep to extricate himself from her arms and bed. It took him ten minutes to collect his personal effects from Fiona's drawers and closets and pack them into a black duffel bag. Though he mortgaged all his considerable skill to do his work as quickly and quietly as possible, he was surprised Fiona didn't wake up. The piece of Michael's brain that could still feel was so overwhelmed with sick grief, he couldn't believe it wasn't somehow detectable.

Training and an instinct for survival allowed him to complete his work with a mechanical efficiency that only broke twice, first at the sight of the framed photographs on the mantle above the dormant fireplace. Michael appeared in just one image, taken by Fiona's old Polaroid; it showed himself and Fiona mid-kiss, half-smiling and lost in each other's eyes. Michael removed that and one other photograph of Fiona from their frames; he wrapped both in a sheet of note paper, which he then tucked under the insole of his shoe. His insole would hide the photographs from his handlers, but he couldn't hide from Fiona the fact that he'd taken them. A secret part of him hoped she'd take the theft as an invitation—that she'd fight for him, as she'd done before.

He betrayed his training again when he allowed himself to look in on Fiona one final time. Standing on the threshold of the bedroom doorway, he watched her narrow chest rise and fall; her left arm was draped limply across the pale blue pillow, her utterly blank features signalling the depths of her oblivion. Watching her, Michael felt nothing. The emotion would come later, and repetitively, for years; ironically, the moment's numb detachment would allow him to recall it with nightmarish precision.

A black sedan was waiting for him in a laneway a block away from the flat. Michael tossed his duffel bag into the back seat and climbed in after it. The driver started the engine in response to Michael's nod of confirmation.

The last day of the best year of Michael Westen's life ended in the air above the Atlantic Ocean, Michael's too-warm forehead resting against the cool surface of an airplane window. His eyes were open, staring at nothing.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

Fiona's eyes narrowed in the direction of her principal antagonist.

"Quit stalling, Joyce. You know there's only one way out."

Joyce glowered at Fiona over the top of her cards, a deep frown exaggerating the nicotine-stained wrinkles around her thin lips.

"Fold," Joyce finally grumbled, veined hands dropping a small handful of cards onto the varnished wood tabletop.

Fiona smiled proudly as she dropped her own cards and started sweeping up the large pile of chips.

"You never learn, Joyce. You may be a shark, but I never leave home without my shark repellent—or my harpoon gun."

"Well," declared Madeline Westen, exhaling a large puff of grey smoke as she looked around the table at the small cadre of retired neighbours; two, including Joyce, were octogenarians, while a third was in her early seventies. "It seems that, as usual, Fiona has wiped you all out."

"She wiped you out, too," Joyce reminded her.

"Please," Madeline scoffed, "I let her win. You know how she pouts when she doesn't get her way."

Fiona's eyes widened. "Ex _cuse_ me?"

Madeline was implacable. "Honey. Call me a liar—I _dare_ you."

Before Fiona could decide whether to test that particular bluff, her phone rang. Not her new phone, but her old one—the one she was keeping for a particular call.

Fiona opened her mouth to make an excuse, but Madeline, perceiving the change that had come over her features at the sound of the phone, beat her to it.

"That sounds important—you go ahead. I think we're done here, anyway. Everyone's broke, and it's an hour past Joyce's bedtime."

Joyce harrumphed, but Fiona was already gone, hurrying through Madeline's lime green kitchen toward the relative privacy of the back stoop.

"Hello…?"

"Fi."

Fiona closed her eyes and breathed deeply against the phone. It had been six weeks since she'd heard Michael's voice—six weeks since they're nearly died with their hands joined over the trigger of a suicide bomb, and Michael had been pulled away from her lips by a pair of mysterious men in dark government suits.

"Fi? Are you there?"

"I'm here," she confirmed, forcing herself back to reality.

"I'm coming back, Fi."

Fiona felt the stirring of familiar suspicions.

"Back as in—"

"As in Miami."

Fiona bit her frowning lip; it was a clearly vague answer.

"When?"

"Now. I'm just picking up a car at the airport."

"Which—"

"The Miami airport."

"You're here… _now_?" she demanded, anger creeping into her voice.

"That's what I—"

"You couldn't have called earlier?"

"I could have. But not privately."

Fiona nodded, well aware that Michael couldn't see the gesture. The nod was for herself, to calm her torrent of emotions. She didn't want to be angry. Yet it was always the same dance, circling again and again around the same increasingly crowed dance floor.

"Where are you right now?" Michael wondered.

"I'm, uh… at your mother's house. It was poker night."

"You're still doing that?" Michael asked, a welcome hint of amusement in his voice.

"Girl's gotta make a living," Fiona defended, nursing a small smile.

"By bilking retirees out of their social security?"

"Please—I always let them win it back. Losing keeps them coming—which keeps Madeline happy."

"Does my mom even _like_ those women?"

"I think she likes to feel young—you know, in comparison."

"I think she likes an excuse to invite you over."

"Maybe," Fiona admitted quietly.

Their brief verbal sparring dissolved into a loaded silence.

"She's been worried about you," Fiona said at last.

"I know. Tell her—"

"I'll tell her you'll be home soon. And that you love her."

"Thank you, Fi," Michael said genuinely. Fiona closed her eyes and breathed, thinking his lips seemed very close to her ear.

"Do you think you could you meet me at the loft?" Michael asked after a moment.

"I can be there in ten minutes."

"I might be a bit longer, but I'll be there soon."

Another silence descended, which Fiona broke by hanging up.

She dropped the phone back into her bag and herself down onto the concrete steps, staring sightlessly out at the small, slightly overgrown yard, which was lit by an orange glow from the floodlight that had clicked on when she opened the door.

A few minutes ago, she hadn't been sure Michael wasn't in Guantanamo—or some other, even worse, even more secretive prison. She hadn't even been sure he was alive. It wasn't the first time Michael had disappeared. Fiona was used to the pattern, but the waiting never got any easier. In fact, it had gotten worse. Fiona's superstitious streak warned her that there were only so many times a person could cheat death—even when that person was as seemingly un-killable as Michael Westen.

And yet, Fiona had also weathered Michael's latest disappearance with a strange, unshakable faith, the likes of which she'd hadn't felt since before the first time Michael had disappeared eleven years ago. This time, there'd been no doubt in her mind that, one way or another, Michael would come back to her. Whether he had to swim an ocean or cross a desert, whether he had to cut off his own arm or dig his way out of the deepest hole the US government could find to bury him in, she'd known she'd see him again. Their fates were intertwined, now, woven together unpredictably, but inexorably. The look in Michael's red-rimmed eyes when he'd allowed himself to be taken by the men in dark suits had told her so, with a depth of conviction that exceeded mere words.

Her certainty that Michael would come back did not, however, extend to what would happen afterwards, and what her life—their life—might look like tomorrow, the next day, or a hundred days from now. From experience, Fiona knew that the calm after the storm was often harder to navigate; minus the immediate threat of death, there were too many choices, and too many doubts.

Fiona had done many things in her life that other people would likely describe as crazy. Yet even she remained awed by her own actions during the standoff with Vaughn. At first, when Michael had offered a heartfelt goodbye to Jesse and hardly a word to herself, she'd been nauseous, physically sickened by an unruly tempest of anger and hurt. It was a sensation she'd felt before, first when Claire had died, and a second time when Michael had deserted her in Ireland. But when Michael had disappeared around the corner of the long hallway carrying his suicide bomb, all of her anger and hurt had suddenly felt very small—selfish compared to the magnitude of what was about to happen, and delusional against all the counter proof of how much Michael really did care. The thought of Michael dying had been devastating; the thought of him dying alone had been unbearable.

Fiona remembered but couldn't quite grasp the perfect clarity of the moment when she'd decided to join Michael in the bullet-pierced cabana. In that moment, her willingness to perish by Michael's side hadn't felt like surrendering to death. Instead, she'd been surrendering to love—a purer, truer form of love than she'd ever felt, for Michael, or anyone else who wasn't kin.

Part of her wanted to preserve that perfect clarity—to capture it under glass and hold its solid substance in her hands like the frozen, glittering moments in her snow globes. Michael's return made that impossible. With each day that passed, Fiona had become more and more unsure of how to live up to her own actions. She'd been willing to die for Michael, but she still wasn't sure if she was willing to live with him, especially if he insisted on going back to his old job. Fiona couldn't imagine any sort of prolonged existence as a CIA girlfriend, regularly waiting months at a time for Michael's calls or a piece of paper from a strange man in a uniform telling her that Michael had perished in some faraway patch of dirt, doing god knows what to protect the fickle interests of the US government.

"Is he okay?"

Fiona started at Madeline's voice over her shoulder.

"He's okay. I think."

"You _think_?"

"He said he'll be home soon," Fiona offered, looking up at Madeline and forcing a not-very-convincing smile. "And that he loves you."

Madeline snorted, pulling a long drag off her Marlborough. "No, he didn't."

"Well, he _implied_ it."

Madeline snorted again as she stepped through the door onto the stoop. With only a hint of stiffness, she plopped herself down next to Fiona, crushing her cigarette into the concrete under her sandal-clad foot. Fiona was disconcerted by the gesture, knowing that Madeline discarding her cigarette meant she was gearing up for her version of a serious talk. Fiona had grown to love Madeline, but her combination of brusque sarcasm and unexpected insight was difficult to navigate at the best of times.

"So he's not in jail?" Madeline asked.

"No," Fiona confirmed. "Not right now, anyway."

"And he hasn't _escaped_ from jail?"

"I don't think so."

"Good. Then everything'll be fine."

Fiona arched an eyebrow. "That's a very confident assessment."

"Am I wrong?"

Fiona dropped her eyes to her feet. "There are still a lot of… issues to deal with."

"Are we talking about Michael's relationship with the government, or Michael's relationship with you?"

"Madeline…"

"Fine. I know. 'It's complicated.' Whatever."

Madeline shifted in her seat, rubbing her hands together between her knees; as always, she was jittery without a cigarette between her fingers.

"Can I ask you a question?" Madeline asked.

"I guess so," Fiona agreed, with more than a hint of trepidation.

"What happened back there?"

"Joyce shouldn't have folded. I was bluffing."

"That's _not_ what I mean."

Fiona pursed her lips tighter. Madeline wanted to know about the standoff with Vaughn.

"Michael had some valuable information," she explained. "The people who burned him wanted it. And we couldn't let that happen."

"I know all of that," said Madeline. "I mean what happened at the _end_ —between you and Michael."

"I don't—"

"Fiona."

Fiona raised her eyes to meet those of Michael's mother. There was a dark, tender seriousness there, at odds with the gruffness of her tone. The longer Fiona knew Madeline, the more she reminded her of Michael, and he of her. Madeline had so many of the same abilities that Michael had—like the ability to say one thing and convey another.

"I made a choice," Fiona told her.

"That's it?" Madeline questioned, clearly dissatisfied.

Fiona gave a half shrug. "That's it."

Recognizing it was the best answer she was going to get, Madeline rolled her own shoulders, and looked out at the orange-tinted lawn.

"When he was growing up," she said. "Michael used to come out here a lot, and just… sit. I always wondered what he was thinking about. What does a boy think about, sitting on the back stoop of his parents' house, staring at the neighbour's fence?"

"Climbing the fence," Fiona answered automatically.

"Or blowing it up."

Fiona smiled wistfully. "It wouldn't take much."

"You'd be surprised."

Fiona glanced at Madeline, but the older woman refused her gaze. Fiona returned her eyes to the yard and the fence. She'd never been much for fences herself, but they no longer scared her the way they still seemed to scare Michael.

Not that she could be certain. Fiona knew Michael as well as she'd ever known anyone. There were family members and friends she'd known longer, but she'd never had a relationship as tumultuous and intimate as her relationship with Michael. She'd seen Michael's naked body gripped by heights of passion and depths of pain; she'd sucked his cock and stitched his wounds; she'd tasted his blood and been wet by his tears. And she understood, better than most people ever could, many the things that drove him—things like anger, guilt, and a burning desire for justice. Yet despite all that, she was often bewildered by his motivations. It was difficult to understand how someone so similar to herself in some ways could be so different in others. At Michael's side, Fiona had rediscovered the joy of helping people, the type of people who couldn't help themselves. But she still didn't aspire, the way she knew Michael did, to fix a broken world. For Fiona, there was something masochistic about a desire like that, which was so certain to end in regretful heartache and a probably futile death.

"I have to go," Fiona said suddenly, pushing herself to her feet.

Madeline nodded absently.

"Next poker night is Thursday. Six o'clock. Don't be late. You owe it to Joyce—I'm pretty sure the thought of beating you is the only thing keeping that old bat alive."

"I'll do my best," Fiona promised.

Fiona took her time driving to the loft, greeting each familiar landmark with a nostalgic gravity—the type of gravity typically reserved for goodbyes. She wasn't sure what she was saying goodbye to, but a purge felt necessary before the reunion to come.

The loft was exactly how she'd left it when she'd headed to Madeline's house for poker night. The bed was neatly made with her 800-thread-count sheets, and the air was filled with the scent of the Chinese lilies she'd arranged on the kitchen table.

The linens and the flowers weren't for Michael; they were for herself. Fiona had been living at the loft for the past three weeks. At first, she and Sam had taken turns occupying it, wanting to make sure no old or new enemies left any unwelcome surprises. But as Sam had begun spending more time at Elsa's penthouse, Fiona had become the loft's main caretaker. Most of her belongings were still at her Brickell condo, but, in addition to her linens, a rack of her clothes had been relocated, along with her shampoo, her hairdryer, a drawer of her underwear, and several pairs of shoes. Fiona was slightly wary of how Michael might react to seeing her dresses and tank tops hanging next to his button downs and t-shirts, but hoped the tactical argument would convince him it was necessary.

Fiona would never admit it, but there were also sentimental reasons she was staying at the loft. Being in the space that Michael had occupied for almost three years was the next best thing to being with Michael. His body felt close when she could sink her hand into his side of the bed. And despite the flowers and the change in linens, the entire loft also smelled of Michael—of his shaving soap, shampoo, and deodorant, plus a dozen other things she couldn't name, all combining in some strange, perfect way to produce his unique, familiar scent.

The loft even looked like Michael. It was both industrially barren and spotlessly clean, each item dramatically visible and impersonal until you spent time with it, and learned to see those things that were hidden in plain sight. Its most visible item—the double bed—was easily the most duplicitous. Positioned in the middle of the expansive room, far away from the walls with clear views of each door and window, the bed was both an anchor and a thing adrift, a lonely centrepiece both fortified and marooned in space. Spot-lit by sunshine in the day and swallowed by cavernous shadows at night, the bed always disguised and advertised intimacies at once mundane and mysterious.

The first time she and Michael had had sex in that bed remained fresh in Fiona's mind. Following the bitter sparring match that had finally landed them on the mattress, Michael had pinned her down and stayed there, aggressive in a way he'd rarely been before, and had never been since. She'd tried to rise up to meet him as he'd shucked off her jeans, but he'd pushed her back against the bed, holding down her shoulders and leaving her jeans hooked around her left foot. His kisses had rattled her teeth as his sweaty body had slid and jarred against hers, his weight and strength repeatedly refusing her attempts to gain the upper hand.

Fiona had wondered then, and still wondered now, how long Michael had gone without before that night. Fiona could imagine Michael taking sex from other women, but it was harder to imagine him giving it, at least in the more recent era of his life; the man Fiona had met in Ireland was not the same man she'd met in Miami, and the difference was deeper than any cover ID or change in scenery could completely account for. Most of the time, Michael seemed like the only man or woman in Miami who was truly indifferent to its copious swaths of nubile flesh.

Fiona was less indifferent, though she was hardly promiscuous; in the nearly three years that she and Michael had been in Miami, Fiona had slept with exactly three men—Michael, Campbell, and a third that, if she had her way, would remain a secret between herself and the man in question. Fiona was sure, though, that in all that time, Michael had only slept with her.

When she was in a bad mood—when she'd had a fight with Michael or gone too long without exploding something or pushing the limits of a high performance engine—Fiona sometimes wondered if Michael simply found her convenient. That was, after all, how he'd described his relationship with his one-time fiancée, Samantha; Michael had said he'd been with Samantha, and very nearly married her, because it had been easy. Michael had also said, of course, that their relationship had always been different, and that he'd finally left Samantha because he'd been in love with her. But that confession had been a bitter consolation; Michael saying he'd loved in the past—while engaged to another woman, no less—didn't guarantee he still loved her in the present.

Yet Michael's body was often a more reliable witness than his words. In that, Fiona was reminded of the second time she and Michael had had sex in his bed at the loft, later in the night after the first time. The second time had been very different from the first; the first time, Michael had possessed her body, but the second time, he'd worshiped it. The visceral memory was fresh behind Fiona's closed eyelids. She'd been moaning noisily and knotting the sheets in her fists as Michael's tongue slid inside her, his stubble pressing her clit and tickling her inner thighs. When she'd cracked open her eyes, she'd seen Michael's face lost in her depths below the bony crest of his supplicating spine and experienced a brief but intense numbness, awestruck and frightened by his devotion to her body and what it must take to lock that type of passion away every other moment of the day—including the next morning, when his speech had descended into monosyllables, and he'd struggled to even meet her eyes.

Recalling the incident in the present reminded her of something eerily prescient her mother had told her many years ago, when she'd still known Michael as Michael McBride. At the time, Fiona had only been with Michael for a few months. But things had moved quickly, enough for her to feel reasonably confident inviting him to her family home for Sunday dinner. The dinner had, by all accounts, been a rousing success; Michael's winning smile had charmed her mother and aunt, and his skill at darts and knowledge of machines and firearms had won over her brothers. After dinner, though, when Fiona and her mother had been alone in the kitchen over a sink of soapy dishes, the older woman had voiced her real feelings. In a deceptively casual voice, Fiona's mother had declared, "That man'll be trouble, 'cause he's got real eyes and a false smile."

Her mother had been right. First, Michael McBride from Kilkenny had turned out to be Michael Westen, American spy; then, one unseasonably warm day in April, he'd fucked her brains out, eaten her dinner, and abandoned her in the middle of the night, leaving no message and taking nothing but a couple of photographs from her mantel. In her happier moments, Fiona imagined Michael's robbery as a touching gesture of regret. In her less happy moments, she viewed it as a final insult; it hadn't been enough for Michael to steal the fact of their happiness—he'd had to steal the memory of it, too.

Suddenly cold despite the loft's muggy warmth, Fiona put a kettle to boil on the stove. She listened to the slow hiss of the heating water and tried not to think as she breathed the lilies that dampened Michael's scent and settled in to wait a little while longer.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Michael parked his rental car a discrete distance from his mother's house and sat for a moment, inspecting the scene.

Even when he'd lived there as a child and teenager, Michael had never really thought of his mother's house as his home; it had never had the warmth and sense of security he imagined a home should have, and had never been somewhere he'd thought of as either a refuge or a retreat.

At present, though, the house did signal a kind of comfort. A few years ago, Michael had been sure that if he ever saw his mother's house again, it would be too soon. But six weeks ago, during the dozens of hours he'd laid on a prison cot staring up into a perpetually bright neon light, he'd been filled with regret about those feelings. It wasn't a regret borne of guilt; Michael didn't blame himself for hating his mother's house, or for running away from it. But he had begun to regret the necessity of running, and of hate. Michael told himself he wasn't a sentimental person; in his line of work, he couldn't afford to be. Yet he did sometimes wonder what it would be like to have more choices—to feel like he could run toward something, rather than always running away.

There were a few lights on in the kitchen and living room, but the poker game was evidently over. Fiona had also left; always mindful to plan for a quick escape, she never parked in the driveway, and her car was nowhere to be seen on the street.

Michael was grateful for Fiona's absence, as he wasn't quite ready to face her. Not that he'd ever truly be ready; as usual, Fiona was the most unpredictable element of his already unpredictable life, a variable he'd always struggled to meaningfully plan or prepare for. Also as usual, he'd nonetheless tried to prepare; he'd been thinking about Fiona almost constantly during the fourteen hours it had taken to fly from Langley to Toronto to Las Vegas to Miami, imagining their reunion a dozen times, and then a dozen more times after that. Each version of the scene had been dramatically or subtly different. In one version, he took Fiona into his arms with all the confidence of a Hollywood leading man knowing his female co-star's passionate surrender was assured by the script. In another version, Fiona stepped away as he reached for her, and he nearly tripped over the packed suitcase at her feet. In yet another version, he didn't have to reach for her, because she reached for him, seizing his body in her hands and giving him everything he ever wanted but was too afraid to ask. There was also a version in which she reached for him and he physically rebuffed her, knowing he'd have to hurt her to save her.

Michael had spent much of the past fourteen hours—as well as the past six weeks and the eleven years before that—trying to believe that distancing himself from Fiona was best thing for both of them. Countless times, he'd told himself that what he'd felt for Fiona—and what, he admitted privately, he still felt for her—was something that, like other forms of sentiment, he simply couldn't afford.

When he was deep into that vein of thought, Fiona's actions during the standoff with Vaughn strengthened his resolve; he'd always feared Fiona's love would end in tragedy, and her attempt to die by his side rather than live without him crystallized that fear.

And yet, especially during the first week after the standoff, which he'd spent parched with thirst inside a 10 x 10 cell under a harsh neon light that rarely let him sleep, memories of what Fiona had done during the standoff had also helped keep him sane.

Like all interrogations, the post-standoff interrogation had tied to disorient and dehumanize him, to get to the truth by stripping away the capacity for deception. Since his basic training more than two decades ago, Michael had been tortured and interrogated many times, but he'd never been broken—had never reached that point of utter hopeless and desperation where a man will say anything to save himself or just make the pain stop. The post-standoff interrogation had brought him as close to the brink as he'd ever come. Although he'd seen faced worse cells and interrogators, he'd never begun an interrogation so physically and emotionally exhausted. In a way, his life of the past three years culminating in the standoff with Vaughn had done his interrogators' work for them; he'd already been nearly broken when he showed up.

But each time he'd teetered on the edge, Fiona had been there to pull him back. Closing his eyes against the burning neon light, Michael had replayed the final moments in the cabana. When Fiona had first burst through the flimsy wooden shutters, Michael had been angry—furious at the recklessness that he'd always known would someday get her killed. A moment later, though, something about her determination had changed his mind. All of a sudden, he'd realized: Fiona's choice had been reckless, but it wasn't thoughtless. She'd known exactly what she'd been doing, and exactly where it would lead. Realizing that, Michael had been struck with a perfect mixture of joy and regret, and smiled through an onrush of tears as his filthy, bleeding hands had gripped hers over the trigger of the suicide bomb. He'd been trying to wordlessly thank her and apologize at the same time, giddy with her love and nauseous at its consequences. In that moment, he'd wanted nothing more than a chance to repay Fiona's love, and assuage his nauseating guilt. Replaying the moment inside his cell behind the weary eyelids that couldn't quite block out the harsh neon light, Michael had known that the miracle of their survival had given him that chance, and promised himself not to squander it. Fiona had been willing to die for him; the least he could do was to live for her.

His determination had faltered, however, the more the stress of his imprisonment faded from his immediate consciousness. Fiona was important, but so was taking down the people on the NOC list. Michael still wasn't sure how to choose between those things, and prayed he wouldn't have to.

Lights from a passing car flashed in the rear view mirror, snapping Michael back to the present.

He exited the car and made a direct approach to his mother's house while still keeping a wary eye on the other parked cars and the neighbours' windows. His mother was standing and waiting for him when he walked through her unlocked front door, brandishing a cigarette that she quickly snuffed out in the ashtray before closing the distance between them and pulling him into a crushing hug.

Before Management's organization had dumped him in Miami, Michael hadn't hugged his mother in almost twenty-five years—not since he was seventeen years old, leaving the state of Florida for the very first time. Some kids went to college, but Michael had joined the army, so desperate to escape that he'd secured special permission to enlist early and bought a bus ticket to training camp as soon as the ink was dry on his final exams. He'd spent the night at the bus station, curling his five-foot-eleven, 150-pound frame into a metal bench, terrified that his father would change his mind and make him stay. His father hadn't found him, but his mother had, jogging out of a city bus just as he was boarding the 6 am Greyhound for Fort Worth. Her eyes had been wet with tears as she'd squeezed him tight enough to hurt. Michael had dutifully wrapped his arms around her body, but he hadn't squeezed back. His dominant emotion had been embarrassment; his teenage self had been mortified that someone cared about him enough to cry because he was leaving.

He wasn't seventeen anymore, but he still had trouble hugging his mother. Now, he was able to make himself available to her, but he still wasn't quite able to hug her back, at least with any measure of comfort. He'd been taller than his mother for a long time, yet he was still vaguely disturbed by his own height juxtaposed her smallness. It didn't seem right that her face only came up to his chest; it reminded him of the gulf that still existed between them, and conjured too many painful memories of other times she'd seemed very small, confronting the wrath of a man Michael was fated to resemble.

Clearly aware of his discomfort, his mother released him quickly, avoiding his eyes as she stepped away from his body.

"So," she said conversationally, lighting up another cigarette as she marched toward the kitchen. "How long are you staying?"

"I only have twenty-four hours," Michael replied, following her. "I have to go back to… where I work… tomorrow night."

"Where is 'where you work'?" she asked, turning to face him at the threshold of the kitchen.

"Langley. I think."

"'You think,'" she intoned.

Michael made a helpless face.

"You're just as bad as Fiona," his mother grumbled.

"Things are still getting sorted out," Michael offered. "I'll tell you what I can, when I can."

His mother shook her head as she continued into the lime green kitchen.

"Do you want something to drink?" she asked.

"Uh, sure…"

Michael took the opportunity to re-familiarize himself with the decor that he remembered better than he sometimes wanted to. The house was mostly how he'd left it six weeks ago, which was mostly how he'd left it twenty-five years before that. Many of the same photographs were still displayed on the mantle, and the same furniture still filled the rooms. That continuity remained a bone of contention between Michael and his mother. Though he could understand some of her compulsion to maintain an appearance of normality, he couldn't understand her commitment to preserving the past. It perplexed him how pictures of himself as a child could make her happy when such pictures never made him anything other than anxious. Michael hated the graven seriousness of his childhood self and his teenage self's postures of toughness and apathy; to his adult eyes, such postures were both painfully over-determined and hopelessly inadequate.

His mother had, however, made some telling changes over the years to her display of photographs. Interestingly, although there were a few of family portraits, there were no photos of his mother and father alone together; years ago, there had been wedding photos, but these were long gone. There was, however, one solo portrait of his father. It was an old photograph, taken when he was younger than Michael in the present. In it, he looked very different from how Michael remembered him. Michael remembered a cruel man, who was bitter with regret and old before his time. But in the solo portrait on his mother's wall, his father's face was bright and smiling—warm with a hint of mischief. Strangely, the presence of his father on the wall didn't particularly bother Michael. In a way, it was almost comforting to see his father reduced to that—to see him become nothing more than an ancient, fading photograph in a cheap gilt frame.

Many government psychiatrists had been frustrated by Michael's insistence that he didn't see much of his father in himself. Their physical resemblance was undeniable, but Michael honestly felt the similarity ended there. In many ways, he'd consciously become the exact opposite of his father. Where his father had been emotional, he was calculated; where his father had hurt people to assuage his own ego, Michael worked very hard to subsume his ego to the greater good. For most of his adult life, Michael had never truly worried about becoming his father, in part because he'd constructed a life that made it virtually impossible, with a hundred checks and balances on his violence and a distinct lack of ambition to become a domestic patriarch. He was secretly glad, though, that he hadn't had to visit any of those government psychiatrists in recent years. No one else knew how he'd struggled for several weeks after his showdown with Simon to confront his own face in the mirror, and he wanted to keep it that way.

For more than two years, his mother's mantelpiece had also featured a photograph of Michael with Fiona. It had remained on the shelf throughout he and Fiona's many official and unofficial breakups and reunions, a testament either to his mother's confidence or her capacity for denial.

Michael remembered the afternoon on Miami Beach when the picture had been taken. His mother had forced them to pose at least a dozen times, a spectacle that he'd hated and Fiona had loved, bolstered and provoked by his own discomfort. In the pose that made it to the mantle, Fiona was gripping his torso and smiling with false demureness; his expression was more of a reluctant smirk, but he did look happy, caught in a moment of surrender to Fiona's uncanny ability to get under his skin.

His mother re-entered the room carrying a nearly full bottle of Maker's Mark and two glasses. She plunked everything down on the kitchen table and took a seat.

Michael joined her hesitantly. "Bourbon…?"

" _Joyce_ brought it."

"Who's Joyce?"

"Don't ask."

"Okay."

Michael winced as he watched his mother pour two rather large glasses of the honey brown liquid. He'd been hoping she'd bring coffee; even though his mother's coffee was usually about as undrinkable as her baking was inedible, he was tired enough to crave it.

Following his mother's lead, he took a mechanical sip of bourbon, hoping it would be kind to his empty stomach.

"What are you doing here, Michael?" his mother asked after a moment.

Michael looked at her. "You spent two decades begging me to visit. Now you're going to complain when I do?"

His mother stared back at him, unimpressed.

Michael dropped his eyes. "I just… wanted to make sure you were okay. After everything."

"And here I thought you wanted to make sure _I_ knew _you_ were okay."

"That, too."

"Are you?"

Michael looked up.

"Okay, I mean," she finished.

"It's been a rough couple of months," he admitted. "But it's getting better."

Their eyes locked for a long moment, his mother searching for details he had no intention of revealing.

"Well," she said at last, helping herself to another hit of bourbon. "It looks like I'm okay, and you're okay… So maybe you should go see Fiona."

"Why? Is something wrong?"

"With Fiona?" his mother scoffed. "Plenty. But—she loves you, Michael."

"I know," he said quietly, staring down at his glass.

"And…?"

"Do you have any idea what she did?" he asked. "During the standoff?"

"Fiona told me she made a choice."

"And did she tell you what that choice was?"

"I know she chose you."

Michael bit the inside of his cheek, a time-worn tactic to keep his emotions from leaking onto his face. Years ago, he never could have imagined the type of conversation he was currently having. He'd never dreamed that he and his mother would ever discuss his love life, or that she'd be the one with the romantic streak.

"It's not that simple," he told her.

"When is it ever?"

Michael looked at her again, searching her face just as she'd searched his and coming up just as empty.

"I need to go," he said, swallowing the remainder of his bourbon before pushing his chair away from the table.

"Déjà vu…"

"What?"

"Nothing. Fiona left here a while ago. The way she drives, I'm sure she's been home for ages."

His mother's use of the word 'home' hit him strangely. He was sure she meant the loft, but at what point had the loft become his 'home," let alone Fiona's?

"I'll try to stop by tomorrow," he said, "before I leave."

His mother nodded. "Only if you have time."

"I'll have time," he promised.

It wasn't a long drive from his mother's house to the loft, but it was long enough to touch base with someone else who deserved an explanation about his status.

Michael dialed Sam's last known number from the burner cell he'd picked up at the airport, the same phone he'd used to call Fiona an hour before; he knew from experience not to use his government-issue phone for any calls he didn't want to be overheard.

Sam answered on the fifth ring, sounding breathless.

"Mike…?"

"Bad time?"

"If you're callin', it's a great time! Where are you?"

"Travelling," he evaded. "But I'm going to be around tomorrow—just for a few hours."

"Hey! That's terrific news, Mikey. I was worried this might be the big one—that you'd finally earned that forever ticket to Cuba."

"Not yet, Sam."

"So what's goin' on? Are you back in?"

"It's a work in progress. For the time being, I'm being treated as an asset."

"Fancy. So they can push you twice as hard and get out of paying for your funeral?"

"Basically."

"But hey, look at me—all doom 'n' gloom. We need to celebrate! Beer's on me."

"Pretty sure I owe _you_ , Sam."

"Well shucks, if you insist. Carlito's?"

"Two o'clock?"

"What a coincidence! That's just when I was planning to be there."

"Great," said Michael, lips curving into what felt like his first smile in weeks.

"Oh, and Mikey?"

"Yeah, Sam."

"It's good to have you back."

"It's good to _be_ back."

Sam hung up and Michael tossed the phone into the empty passenger's seat. He didn't have any bags; all he had was the suit on his back and a wallet that was empty with the exception of an ID badge and a meagre CIA-issue discretionary fund, to be used for expenses only.

He parked his rental car on the street outside the club and made his approach to the loft on foot. He didn't have keys, but Fiona had thought of that, and left the gate unlocked. He walked slowly past her blue Hyundai Genesis and up the slatted stairs, pursued by unwanted thoughts of his last day in Ireland. Then, too, he'd had to spout many lies and exploit many favours to secure permission to see Fiona.

Michael knew his history with Fiona was in his CIA file. He wasn't sure of the exact terms of that official record, but it wouldn't be flattering. Fiona was a former IRA operative and arms dealer who was still on more than one Interpol watch list. And, eleven years ago, she'd almost made him betray his country.

Michael had never told Fiona or anyone else just how close he'd come to abandoning the CIA to remain by her side. But Tom Card knew it, which meant the Agency knew it.

Michael remembered with brutal, crystal clarity every word of the argument he'd had with Card in the back of the surveillance van disguised as a bakery truck on a busy street in Dublin's city centre, and the way he'd grown increasingly and uncharacteristically frantic as Card had rejected every proposal he'd made to either stay in Ireland or take Fiona with him. Card had been right to reject the proposals; none of them had made tactical sense, and were, in fact, stalling tactics, last-ditch efforts to avoid what Michael had known in his heart was inevitable.

Card had responded to his star pupil's escalating passions like the devoted, tough-but-fair father Michael had never had: angered, but primarily disappointed by his wayward son.

"I honestly thought," Card had told him, "that out of all the operatives I've trained, you'd be the last one to think with your cock."

"That's not what this is," Michael had protested, his skin darkening with anger.

Calmly and with a hint of sadness, Card had leaned back in his seat and shrugged. "What is it, then? 'Cause you're sure as hell not using your brain. Think about it, Michael—do you think Fiona Glenanne is the type of woman who wants to be the wife of a spy? Do you see her buying a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, waiting patiently by the phone and making two dinners every night, just in case you come home? In six months, she'd hate you, and in eight months, you'd hate yourself."

Eleven years ago, Michael had swallowed Card's words. He'd had to, in order to keep from either assaulting his training officer or humiliating himself by trying to convey what he really thought, and what he really wanted. Michael had never wanted Fiona as his fuck buddy, just as he'd never wanted her in a house in the suburbs, cooking him dinner and waiting for him to come home. What he'd wanted then, and what he knew, deep down, he still wanted now, was to have Fiona fighting by his side, sharing his work as well as his bed.

Leaving the CIA to be with Fiona wouldn't have been easy; he and Fiona would have become fugitives from both their governments, on the run for the rest of their lives. Under those circumstances, a long, happy life wasn't probable, though with their skills, it might have been possible. Michael would never know for sure, since he hadn't been willing to take the risk. The best he'd been able to do was talk Card into letting him see Fiona a final time, only to abandon her—trying to save her life by breaking her heart.

He'd also, though, been saving his own life—the life he'd become accustomed to in what had been, at the time, his decade of work as a CIA operative. He'd loved Fiona, but it was difficult for one year of rocky passion to truly negate a decade's worth of training and nearly two decades before that of domestic dystopia. Card, of course, had known that, and had chosen his words accordingly, playing on Michael's fears to make sure he did the right thing, which also happened to be what was best for Card and the US government.

During his interrogation six weeks ago, Michael had gotten away with describing Fiona as an "ex-girlfriend" and "current associate." Yet after the official interrogation had ended, Raines, the man who'd once recruited him, had re-introduced the subject.

"What do you plan to do," Raines had asked, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows of his palatial office toward the Potomac, "about Fiona Glenanne?"

"Do?" Michael had echoed.

"Are you going to keep associating with her?"

"Is that a problem?"

Raines had turned to look at him, wearing a weary expression that was all-to-familiar. "You tell me, Michael."

"No," Michael had said tightly. "It's not a problem."

There'd been no more discussion of Fiona until Michael had made his request for a twenty-four-hour leave. Michael had told Raines he had "affairs" he needed to settle before they started their physical hunt for the people on the NOC list.

"'Affairs,'" Raines had intoned. "Is that what they're calling it these days?"

Michael had ignored the rhetorical question. "You owe me, Raines. The _agency_ owes me."

"Fine," Raines had agreed. "You have twenty-four hours. If you're not back in that time, consider yourself re-burned."

Anxious to end the conversation, Michael had turned to leave, but Raines' voice had forced him to pause.

"Oh, and Michael? If you get a chance, please remind Ms. Glenanne that she's on the no-fly list. Our current government might be soft on Wall Street, but I'm pretty sure it's still tough on terrorists."

Michael hadn't said anything, since there had been no point. Michael couldn't defend his relationship with Fiona on the grounds of logic or tactics. If he wanted to keep her in his life—or just out of prison—all he could do was be good enough, valuable enough, to garner some leverage to protect her. Yet any leverage was limited, just as any favour was risky—especially now, when Michael was just starting to rebuild the Agency's trust.

This time, though, Michael had been willing to take the risk. He still wasn't convinced that Fiona's love wouldn't eventually kill them both. But, having finally found her again after so many years of loneliness and denial, he was just as unsure that a life without her could truly be worth living.

Just as he'd done eleven years ago, Michael raised his first, and knocked on the door of the place that, against all odds, had become his home, equally expecting to be kissed and strangled by the woman he loved.


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

Fiona was sitting at the kitchen table when Michael arrived at the loft, staring down at a steaming cup of coffee she had no real intention of drinking. At the sound of his knock, she bounded to her feet and raced to the door, all of her moody trepidation becoming a rush of nervous excitement.

She yanked open the heavy steel door to greet him, and they stood there for a moment on opposite sides of the threshold. Michael was wearing a drab, black, off-the-rack suit, which she recognized immediately as a government suit. If he'd been wearing a tie, it was long gone; his blue striped shirt was unbuttoned to the groove of his chest. Even in the dim light, she could tell he was pale, from both tiredness and a lack of sun; there was purple in the creases around his eyes, and he hadn't shaved in at least a day, suggesting either a long flight, or an indirect one. He didn't look awful—Michael never looked truly awful, at least to her eyes. But he didn't quite look like himself.

His visage improved somewhat when his lips curved into a small, weary smile.

"Hi, Fi."

Fiona's heart pounded in her throat as she did her best to smile back, and stepped aside to invite him in.

As she turned to close the door, Michael reached for her. Not expecting his touch, Fiona started, causing Michael to drop his hand. She tried to repair the damage by stepping forward into his body, but he remained strangely stiff, and the resulting kiss was brief, and awkward.

"Sorry," Michael offered, talking a half-step back. "It's, uh… been a long day."

"It's been a long _month_ ," she corrected.

"I'm—"

"Sorry. I know."

Michael nodded, avoiding her eyes as his right hand massaged the back of his neck.

Fiona decided to change tacks. "Do you want some coffee?"

"Yeah," he agreed. "I'll be there in a minute. Just let me get changed."

Fiona returned to the kitchen to pour another cup of coffee from the French press. She gave Michael some time alone to come back to himself, keeping her attention focused on her own steaming mug of coffee as Michael stripped off his government suit behind the privacy of the wardrobe door across the room. After a few minutes, Michael returned, wearing a much more Miami-appropriate outfit of faded jeans, a dark grey t-shirt, and a pair of well-loved Adidas sneakers. His outfit matched the tone of her own: a pair of 7 for All Mankind cut-offs and a drapey white tank top over a vivid purple bra.

"You look better," she remarked.

"I thought you liked me in suits."

"Not that suit."

"Fair enough."

She could practically hear the exhausted creak of Michael's joints as he climbed up onto the bar stool next to hers, and wrapped his hand around the mug of black coffee she'd set out for him.

"Do you want a yogurt?" Fiona asked.

"Maybe later. Coffee's good for now."

Fiona pretended to study her own beverage as Michael took a small, slightly noisy sip. Tiny details seemed to take on an outsized importance as she tried to imagine where he'd been, and what he'd been through. His arms were pale along with his face, and there was a chip in the index finger of his right hand. His hair was slightly longer than usual, and she was surprised to see some tiny, barely perceptible flecks of grey at his temples, matching those in his stubble; she'd long suspected that Michael coloured his hair, but the tangible evidence was nonetheless off-putting, reminding her of everything they still didn't know or understand about each other. She wanted to reach out and repair that gap. But short of knocking him off his stool and covering his body with hers, she wasn't sure how to start.

They picked the same moment to break the silence, voices overlapping.

"So what have you—" "Where have you—"

They both stopped abruptly. Fiona wanted to find the humour, but instead she was frustrated. She hadn't been sure what she wanted from their reunion, but she definitely hadn't expected it to consist of awkward kisses and brittle conversation.

"We're no good at this," she said quietly.

"But maybe we could try…?"

Michael's eyes told her he meant it. Fiona took a breath, and started again.

"Sam and I did a few jobs while you were gone."

"Anything interesting?"

"On Tuesday, we helped save a kitten from a tree."

Michael regarded her skeptically, waiting for a punchline.

"The kitten was hooked into a Ponzi scheme, and the tree was run by a shady hedge fund manager in the pocket of a Columbian cartel," Fiona finished.

"Funny."

"I thought so."

"How's Jesse?"

"He's back at CIFA. They cleared him a few weeks ago."

"Wow. That's great."

"I don't think he likes it."

"Really? Why?"

Fiona shrugged. "I think he misses saving kittens from trees."

For a moment, Fiona was sure Michael was going to respond to her intentionally loaded comment. But instead, he sipped his coffee.

"And Sam?" he asked.

"You haven't talked to him?"

"I called him on the way over, but we didn't talk long."

"He's good. The girlfriend is keeping him busy."

"Which girlfriend is this?"

"The one with the hotels."

"Uh…"

"Elsa."

"Still…?"

"I think it's for real."

"Well, he did sound out of breath when he picked up the phone."

Fiona made a face. "Ew."

Michael smirked at her discomfort. "He's always been like that."

"Sam's like an inversion of you."

Michael's gaze flickered over the rim of his mug as he took a long, deliberate sip. She watched him swallow, and wondered if she was reading too much into the way his fingers curled and tensed around the smooth surface of the mug as he replaced it on the table.

"If you say so," he said.

Fiona sipped her own coffee to distract her itchy hands, not yet trusting her read of the situation. Michael's flirting was so rare, it was sometimes hard to spot.

"Wait until you see him—Sam's lost at least ten pounds since you've been gone."

"You're kidding."

" _Don't_ tell him I said this—but he looks good."

"This is what happens when I leave for six weeks—I deteriorate, and my friends thrive."

He ran his hand through his hair as he said it, yet Fiona knew his words were more than just a reference to his objectively minor flecks of grey.

"We prefer having you around," she told him.

Michael met her eyes quickly, offering a tiny, somewhat melancholy smile.

"I noticed a bunch of your stuff in the closet," he said. "Have you been staying here?"

Fiona shifted her shoulders against the tensing of her spine. "Sam and I thought someone should keep an eye on things. We were taking turns, but then he got busy with Elsa, and it was starting to be a lot of driving between here and Brickell every day, especially when were working, so I thought—"

"Fi," he interrupted. "It's fine. Bring whatever stuff you need—there's lots of room."

It was one of Michael's most impressive and irritating gifts: to say things that were seemingly direct, but altogether sideways. Fiona knew that, in his own way, Michael was trying to tell her something important. But all she could think about was how much easier it would be if she could touch him, and use her hands and body to bring him back to himself—and back to her.

Her eyes wandered from his tired blue eyes to his much-missed lips and down to his chest, dwelling on the subtle bump of his nipples under his thin, soft t-shirt. Her hands tightened around her mug as she imagined herself peeling his clothes off his body, seeing if his tan had faded everywhere and if she'd missed any other grey hairs.

"Fi, I—"

Fiona silenced him with her lips. Michael was surprised, but willing, gripping her shoulder for balance as he struggled to match her enthusiasm. Their stools squealed as they both tried to get closer, Fiona almost falling from her seat as she arched her back into Michael's grip. A moment later, Michael stepped down from his stool to press himself between her open legs, sighing into her mouth as he ran his fingers through her loose hair.

Things progressed quickly. Fiona moaned through a messy flurry of kisses while Michael's hands swept over her hips and under her top; her own hands mapped the contours of his back, dipping into the rear waistband of his jeans before circling to the front. Michael bit her lip as she outlined the shape of his need through the denim, and then made a delicious sound as she popped open the button to reach inside.

Her breath was fast and deep against his rough cheek when she asked, "How long are you staying?"

Michael cupped the back of her head as he sucked her exposed throat, his half-open jeans rubbing against her bare thigh.

"I have to go back tomorrow," he breathed.

"Tomorrow?" Fiona echoed, pulling her face away.

Michael swallowed, pleasure-cloudy eyes struggling to focus. "Tomorrow evening. It's a twenty-four hour leave."

"Leave?" she echoed again. "Does that mean you're back in?"

"For now, I'm just an asset."

"For now…?" she asked, sick of repeating his poorly chosen words.

"That's all I know—honestly," Michael pleaded, clearing hoping they could move past the familiar argument.

"Are they going after the people on the list?"

Michael nodded. "Starting tomorrow, basically."

"And you're in on it?"

He nodded again.

"And what about us?" she asked, then amended quickly, "Me, Sam, and Jesse, I mean."

Michael let out a breath as he finally released her, and backed away. He was still hard as he paced to the end of the table and back, rubbing his neck.

In his hesitation, Fiona had her answer.

"Oh. I get it," she said flatly. "Now that the government's involved, we're not."

"It's not up to me, Fi," Michael protested.

Fiona glared at him, anger building.

"And this is, what—a pit stop?"

" _No_ ," he denied, turning to meet her anger. "I have to leave, but I'll be back."

"When?"

"I don't know," he admitted.

"Ballpark?"

"A month? Two months, tops? Again, it's not—"

"Not up to you—I know."

"Do you have any idea," he began, tone rising, "what I went through just to _get_ here?"

"No," she shot back. "How could I? You never tell me anything."

Michael elided her accusation. "It's not just about me, you know."

"What does that—"

"I need to get back in to keep you _safe_. To keep _everyone_ safe."

"This again? Michael—I don't need _protecting_. I can take care of myself. We can _all_ take care of ourselves."

The hurt on Michael's face was immediate and obvious a split second before he caught himself, wiping his face blank and looking anywhere that wasn't in her direction. Fiona literally bit her tongue, recognizing too late her own poor choice of words.

"Michael…" she pleaded, climbing down from her stool. "I didn't mean it like that."

"It's fine," he lied.

"We _want_ you here. That's all anyone wants."

"But now I _am_ here, and it's not enough. Isn't that what you keep telling me?"

"I don't know, Michael," she said wearily. "Not anymore."

"Since—"

"Since everything. I don't know…"

They both avoided each other's eyes, though Fiona continued to watch Michael from the corner of hers. He shifted his weight uncomfortably as he buttoned the jeans that now threatened to slide off his narrow hips. After he'd done that, he didn't seem to know what to do with his hands, fumbling with his pockets before finally crossing his arms across his chest. Her heart broke a little at the messy spectacle of his frustrated passion. Everything seemed backwards; for once, he was the one with the palpable desire, while she was disturbingly uncertain.

"Do you want to get out of here for a bit?" Michael asked at last. "Maybe take a drive?"

"Where?" Fiona questioned.

"The beach…?" he asked tentatively.

His suggestion caught her genuinely off-guard. " _You_ want to go to Miami Beach. And do what—walk along the boardwalk holding hands?"

"Humour me, Fi. Please."

She eyed him for another long moment. From anyone else, a suggestion to visit the beach would sound normal; but from Michael Westen, it sounded suspicious, and borderline insane.

"Fine," she agreed. "Should I change?"

"It's Miami Beach, so…"

"So I'm probably over-dressed."

Fiona combed her fingers through her hair and pushed her bra back into place as she went to the wardrobe to collect some shoes. She chose a pair of Stuart Weitzman wedge sandals that were walkable without sacrificing the benefits of extra height.

When she returned, Michael was waiting for her by the door.

"You can drive," he said.

"What's your rental?"

"Ford Focus."

"Ug."

"I know. The trunk barely fits two sniper rifles with tripod mounts."

She smiled half-heartedly at his attempted humour, glad of the effort even if she still wasn't in the mood. At the very least, his invitation to the beach had surprised her, and she was willing to see if the night had any more surprises in store.


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

Michael watched the lights of downtown Miami streaming past in the passenger's side window, trying to look interested in the familiar scenery to avoid Fiona's gaze. His suggestion that they drive to the beach had mostly been a stall, something he knew would through Fiona off-kilter and give him more time to try and devise the right things to say. Part of him, though, did hanker after the thought of sinking his feet into the cool sand while breathing the salty ocean air. His actual confinement had ended five weeks ago, but since then, he'd still been functionally imprisoned, shuttled between a seemingly endless series of cold grey offices and even colder interrogation rooms. The few times he'd gone outside, the weather had felt just as oppressive; after three years in Miami and several more in Afghanistan before that, the frigid temperatures of the North East had been a significant shock to his system, one that almost made him miss the muggy Miami heat.

He didn't actually intend to take off his shoes and walk on the beach. Technically, he wasn't much safer than he'd been six weeks ago; his old enemies, including those implicated in the NOC list, might still be gunning for him, and his renewed association with the CIA didn't provide much protection. But, with Fiona at his side, it should be safe enough to at least park and observe the landscape. He was glad Fiona couldn't see the images that flitted through his mind, of the two of them sitting on the hood of her car, looking out at the bright, flat expanse of sand that bled out into the thick, inky ripples of waves and the seemingly endless ultramarine sky.

As usual, the streets of downtown Miami were relatively quiet; for years, the city's nightlife had shunned the downtown core in favour of the louder, shinier thrills of South Beach. Yet there was, Michael admitted privately, a strange, decrepit majesty to the lonely neon signs lining the empty streets; the signs were like dreams or spectres from a bygone era, ready to vanish in the light of day.

They turned down 1st and onto Flagler, passed the old Paramount Theatre. The theatre had been shuttered for decades, but the marquee was still up from the year it closed, advertising _Licence to Kill_. The title on the marquee was a strange coincidence, since Michael had once skipped school with his friend Ricky to watch a Paramount marathon of James Bond films. At the time, he hadn't been particularly interested in Bond's word of cartoonish stunts and corny one-liners; he'd gone mostly because he'd been even more bored with school, and because his twelve-year-old self been intrigued by Ricky's enraptured descriptions of the Bond girls. He remembered Ricky staring slack-jawed at the wet skin of Domino and Honey Rider, but his own enjoyment of such spectacles had been undercut by the way Bond sometimes treated such women, which reminded him a bit too much of his home life. He was, though, momentarily drawn to Tracy in _On her Majesty's Secret Service_ , who's helplessness during the final standoff couldn't eclipse her rescue of Bond at the skating rink—the way she'd smiled with lustful confidence behind the wheel of her Mercury Cougar as she and Bond had raced the villains down the icy mountain, a race that ended, of course, in a convenient hay mow.

A few blocks after the theatre, they passed the hot pink neon sign for the Landing Strip, another obsession of his former schoolmates that had never held much magic for himself.

As the club's sign faded from view, he asked, "Did I ever tell you how I met Sam?"

"Is it a good story?"

"I met him at a strip club in West Germany," he replied.

"Liar."

"I swear."

"When was this?"

"1988."

"'88? Meaning you were, what—"

"Nineteen," he finished for her, "turning twenty. I was in the army at the time. I was supposed to report to Sam as part of my assignment. He made me meet him at the strip club."

"Because he just liked to hang out there, or…"

Michael shook his head. "I think it was supposed to embarrass me."

Fiona's eyes widened. " _Don't_ tell me you were a—"

"Sorry to disappoint you, but no."

"Then why—"

"The guys in my unit thought I was too serious. Too 'by the book.'"

"Let me get this straight: in high school, you had a reputation for getting suspended. And in the army, you had a reputation for following the rules?"

"People change," said Michael.

Fiona met his eyes for a moment. She had just opened her mouth to say something when her attention was diverted to the street behind them.

Michael followed her eyes and became sure, in the same moment that she did, that they were being followed. Michael had first spotted the silver Porsche Carrera with the tinted windows several blocks before, but was waiting to see if it disappeared after Fiona's series of unnecessary detours. It hadn't; the car had followed every turn, getting closer each time.

"Uh, Fi…"

"I know. I've been trying to lose them since the Paramount."

"Any idea who it is?"

"You know that case with the kitten?"

"Yes…"

"Well, it wasn't a kitten. It was an aspiring stock trader with a sick mother. But the rest of it was true. And it's also not quite over."

Michael eyes widened at her profile. "You're telling me we're being chased by enforcers for a Columbian drug cartel?"

"Maybe…?"

He ground his teeth as he rifled through the glove box for the Walther he knew she always kept there.

"This is exactly what I'm talking about," he complained, checking and locking the clip in the Walther. "You shouldn't be taking _risks_ like this, Fi."

" _I_ had it under control," she returned. " _You're_ the one who wanted to go for a walk on the beach."

"We can talk about it later. What else have you got for firepower?"

"Uh…" Fiona trailed off, biting her lip.

She kept her eyes on the road and mirrors as he stared again at her cheek. "Don't tell me you're worried I'm going to rat you out to the feds."

"That's not it," she said. "It's because it was supposed to be a _surprise_."

" _Fi_ ," he urged, watching the Porsche edge closer.

"Since you've been gone," she began brightly, "I've been trying to… go more legit."

"Legit," he intoned.

Fiona ignored his skepticism. "I'm not selling guns anymore, and all my C-4—and all my really _good_ firepower—is locked safely away where the government can't prove it's mine. I also got this."

Keeping one hand on the wheel, she fished a slim wallet out of the back pocket of her cut-offs and tossed it his general direction. Michael caught it, and pulled out the laminated card at the front.

"A bail bondsman license?"

"See?" she said proudly. "Legit."

"It's under a Fake ID."

"Baby steps, Michael."

Michael was still gritting his teeth as he replaced the card in her wallet, but he was already less angry. Part of him was touched by her effort to meet him halfway, while another, deeper part of him was comforted by how little she'd ultimately managed to change.

He asked, "So what do you want to do about our friends?"

"I could lose them on the causeway."

Michael shook his head. "That'll attract the cops. It'd rather not get arrested tonight, if possible."

Fiona nodded. "I'll stay downtown. Try to lose them by doubling back."

She slowed down before the oncoming light and then unleashed a burst of speed, making a jackknife left turn through the yellow. Michael's stomach lurched as he steadied himself against the window frame. In the side mirror, he could see that the Porsche was still following, but had been slowed considerably by the crush of cars in the intersection behind them.

The Porsche had started to catch up again by the time Fiona turned north onto Biscayne. Fiona let it pull closer, waiting until is was nearly alongside them. Then she executed a stunning U-turn, the Genesis' tires screeching and burning as it spun in a tight half-circle and slipped through a narrow break in the median, finally landing in the southbound lanes.

Fiona grinned as they sped south to a chorus of honking horns. "That was easy."

She'd barely gotten the words out when they both saw an acid green Camaro streaking toward them on the opposite side of the median, a muscular tattooed arm dangling a stainless Jericho out the window. Instinctively and in union, Michael and Fiona ducked behind the dash. Two bullets careened off the hood of the Genesis before the Camaro peeled past, performing a noisy U-turn in their wake.

"Looks like our friends have friends," Fiona observed dryly.

As she spoke, Michael was already leaning out the passenger's side window, concentrating on aiming a few warning shots in the direction of the Camaro that was now knifing through the traffic behind them. Shooting out of a moving car window was difficult at the best of times, and harder with the presence of so many civilians. Trying to disable the Camaro might cause a larger accident, and ricochets could be just as dangerous. Out of that slew of bad choices, Michael settled for firing two shots into the windshield. The first buried itself into the lower half of the window on the passenger's side, near the wipers; the second made an audible pop as it cracked the glass on the driver's side. The Camaro continued its pursuit, but drew back.

Michael returned to his seat, keeping an eye on the Camaro in the mirror.

"We have to get off the main streets," he said. "I don't want them hitting someone else trying to get to us."

Fiona did as he suggested, taking the first opportunity to turn left off of Biscayne, heading back toward the river. Unfortunately, the Camaro managed to keep pace; at each intersection Michael could see flashes of it on the parallel street.

They were both so intent on watching the Camaro that they didn't see the orange construction sign until they were nearly on top of the massive sinkhole it advertised. Fiona jammed on the breaks, fishtailing on the pavement until the front end of the Genesis ground to a stop against the wooden barrier stretching the width of the street. In the few seconds she paused, the Camaro appeared again, this time screeching to its own stop on the opposite side of the barrier. Michael and Fiona ducked again under the dash as several more bullets clanged off the car's frame.

Still ducked halfway below the dash, Fiona wrenched the Genesis into reverse.

"Don't worry," she said.

Michael wasn't worried. He worried about Fiona when they were apart, and between jobs. But he never worried about her when they were in the thick of things, running or pursing or forcing a standoff. Manipulating a high performance engine, casks of dangerous chemicals, or all manner of guns and rifles, Fiona was in her element. And he was right there with her, understanding and trusting her implicitly and almost instinctively, their union so natural he didn't have to think.

As the Genesis sped backwards, Michael braced his left hand against the dash and fired again toward the Camaro, aiming for the tires and the engine block. He didn't really expect to hit anything useful at that distance and speed, but he wanted to preserve the threat while they made another getaway.

Within seconds, Fiona had them headed east, weaving expertly through the intersections and slower moving cars.

"I hate to say this," she said, "but unless you want things to get messy, we might have to bail."

Michael could see flashes of the Camaro over Fiona's left shoulder, still matching their progress on another parallel street. Worse, the Porsche had found them again as well; he could glints of its hood it in the mirror, several blocks back but closing.

"No," he said. "Not with no firepower, when I don't know the players. Let's try to hide instead."

"What about the parking garage at 10th and 5th?" she proposed.

"Try the storage facility on 4th—neat the 95. But you'll need to make some space before we get there."

"I think I can manage that."

Fiona performed another jackknife turn onto 1st. Then she applied a terrific burst of speed. As she drove, Michael took a moment to watch her. Her lips were pursed with concentration, but they also curled up at the corners in a subtle but genuine smile. The streaming lights flashed at irregular intervals in her already-glittering hazel eyes, and her hair bounced and whipped across her flushed cheeks. He could see the lean muscles tense and stretch in her bare, tanned arms as she pulled down hard on the gear shift and wrenched the wheel hard to the left to overcome a slow-moving truck, a maneuver that threw him first against the window and then back against the leather upholstery, seatbelt digging into his chest and gut. Michael's breath hitched, but not from the seatbelt. To the extent that he could still think, he faced an epic quandary, both hoping the chase would continue indefinitely and that it would end quickly so Fiona could do to him what she was doing to the car, looking down at his naked body with the same aggressive joy.

Both the Camaro and the Porsche were lost in the distance by the time they peeled into the abandoned storage facility. Fiona drove to the opposite side of the lot, out of sight of the road. The pavement switched to gravel as they turned toward a bank of large units with steel sliding doors. Though the facility had been closed for months, the units remained padlocked to deter squatters and vandals.

As the Genesis skidded to a stop in the gravel, Michael and Fiona both jumped out, Michael tossing Fiona the lock picks as he jogged around the car to the driver's side; though they sometimes argued about who was the better locksmith, the truth came out when the chips were down.

The supposedly owner-less locker still contained several rows of boxes that made a crunching sound as Michael backed the Genesis into the space. But the car just fit, with more than an inch to spare at the front and half a dozen inches at the driver's side.

Fiona hurried inside to join him, kicking their tire tracks out of the gravel and pulling down the sliding steel door after her. Michael turned off the engine and climbed back into the passenger's seat as Fiona squeezed her body through the narrow space between the car and the wall to drop into the driver's seat.

It was impossible to re-lock the unit from the outside, which would give them away to a careful observer. As a result, their best defence would be making sure their pursuers were as distracted as possible.

Michael pulled out his CIA-issue phone and called the police.

"Hello, I want to report a street race… Yes, I have the locations and license numbers…"

As he talked, Fiona pried the Walther out of his left hand. For a moment, Michael resisted giving it up. But he surrendered quickly, knowing it was a losing battle.

"… you've been extremely helpful. Thank you."

Once the call ended, Michael and Fiona sat silently with the windows up, waiting. Within ten minutes, they heard a pair of sirens, which got quickly louder before speeding passed. Chances were good that the cops would either keep the Columbians busy or dissuade them from their pursuit. The fact that the cops had been called from a CIA-issue phone might attract additional attention, though Michael was also dreading the explanations he'd undoubtedly have to make to his superiors.

Michael and Fiona continued to wait in silence until long after the sirens had faded. As they waited, the locker was hot and getting hotter, warmed by the car's residual heat. It was also almost completely dark. The only light came from a ventilation shaft that must have been close to a floodlight on the exterior wall. A few dim bars of illumination found their way through the shaft and into the car, creating two small pools of light near Fiona's left shoulder.

Minute by minute, the car filled with the scent of their adrenaline, which they both inhaled deeply. Michael's shirt was sticky against his chest and slippery on the seat back each time he tried to move. To distract himself, he focused on the only visible inches of Fiona's body, studying her glistening shoulder and the spot where her tank top clung damply to the contours of her bra.

"What do you want to do?" Fiona asked at last.

"I think we should wait a bit longer," Michael replied.

A creak of leather signalled Fiona leaning back in her seat, followed by the clunk of her platform sandal-clad foot landing on the dash. From memory rather than sight, Michael followed the groove of muscles up Fiona's calf to her thigh, to where her skin would disappear into the brief hem of her cut-offs.

"Are you really trying to go legit?" he questioned.

"A little."

"On my behalf?"

"I know the international conspiracy that consumes your life suggests otherwise—but not everything is about you, Michael."

"Okay—sorry."

The car was plunged back into silence; the only sound was Fiona's fingernail tapping against the grip of her Walther.

"I just wanted to make a change," she said. "Even I know bureaucracy can have its advantages."

Michael thought about the image of Fiona's innocently smiling face from her bounty hunter's license.

"Don't change too much," he said softly.

Fiona shifted again in her seat, but her finger no longer tapped on her Walther.

"What were you talking about before?" she asked. "About it being hard to get here?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Michael."

"When they took me into custody six weeks ago, I spent the first week in solitary."

"Did they torture you?"

"Just the usual—sleep deprivation, never enough water."

"I'm sorry."

"I've had worse," he assured her.

After a moment, she asked, "So they interrogated you?"

"Yeah."

"Did they ask you about me?"

He considered lying, but couldn't see the benefit.

"Yes."

"And what did you say?"

"I told them they didn't need to know."

It was a flimsy evasion, one he knew Fiona wouldn't buy. Sure enough, her next words attempted to attack the issue from another angle.

"Speaking of going legit, it would be helpful to know what I'm up against."

"Meaning…"

"What's in my CIA file?"

Suddenly wishing he could read her face, Michael hesitated before admitting, "The only time I saw your file was before the mission in Ireland. I haven't had access to it since."

"Really?"

"I tried to get it once, but there were orders to keep it out of my hands."

"Why would someone do that?"

Michael took a deep breath, and released it. "Because where you were concerned, I couldn't be trusted."

Fiona seemed to go very still, everything but her smell and the sound of her breathing lost in the darkness.

"Couldn't be trusted… Or can't be trusted?"

With the back of his hand, Michael wiped a pool of sweat from his upper lip.

"The agency's not thrilled you're back in my life," he said.

Fiona scoffed. "What are they going to do about it?"

"Don't joke, Fi—not about this."

He heard the sticky pop of Fiona's bare thigh detaching itself from the upholstery as she lowered her foot from the dash.

In a low voice, she asked, "Then what are _you_ going to do about it?"

Her words seemed to hang and vibrate in the close air between them. His skin twitched where Fiona's hair touched his shoulder, and it was all he could do not to cough on the thickness of her smell—her sweat, her citrus shampoo, and even her breath, smelling like coffee and the mint gum she'd chewed to try and mask it. He shifted in his increasingly uncomfortable jeans, even his t-shirt suddenly scratchy against his warm skin. His mind flashed back to her hand thrusting down hard on the stick shift and he knew he was lost, as lost as he'd been in the Black Sand Pub twelve years ago, and in the bullet-ridden cabana six weeks ago, before she'd offered her life to save his soul.

"I know what I _want_ to do," said Michael.

"And what's that…?"


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

"The agency's not thrilled you're back in my life," Michael said.

Fiona scoffed. "What are they going to do about it?"

"Don't joke, Fi—not about this."

Fiona shifted, prying her sticky thigh loose from the leather seat as she removed her foot from the dash.

Her hair brushed Michael's shoulder as she smelled his over-worked deodorant and listened to his body shifting in the seat next to hers. Her left hand squeezed the grip of the Walther between her legs, glad of its solidity. She seemed to be drowning in sweat and the rising tide of her own languorous, deafening pulse.

In a low voice, she asked, "Then what are _you_ going to do about it?"

Every sense and nerve-ending was on fire with painful withdrawal. Something perfect and primal happened when she and Michael worked together, every hurt subsumed by a physical connection so pure, it made her doubt her own doubts. Inhaling his scent and hearing his deep, heavy breathing, she was nearly desperate to recapture and complete their connection. The fresh memories hummed through her body, from her chest to her gut and down; in the quiet darkness, she could still feel the rumble of the engine under her bare thighs and the heat of Michael's gaze on her skin; she could also still see the taut curves of his back craning out the window of her car, the pose hitching up his t-shirt to expose several inches of his smooth, firm stomach.

"I know what I _want_ to do," Michael said, his words tingling on her cheek.

"And what's that…?"

Michael's rough thumb touched her face, so gently it almost hurt, like a fuzz of electricity through a faulty circuit. Fiona exhaled shakily as Michael's feather-light fingers traced her cheekbone to her lips, the smell and warmth of her own breath wafting back at her from his hand. As Michael's fingers trailed down her neck to her hair, she remained very still, alive with desire, but paralyzed by need. She didn't respond immediately when he kissed her—slowly and almost chastely, ghosting the edges of lips. But when his face started to pull away, the threat of losing his closeness spurred her to action. She dove in frantically, and he met her there, caressing her tongue and sucking hard on her bottom lip. She licked the salty sweat off his pout and gave it back to him inside his mouth, teeth assaulting her own bottom lip when she tried to swallow Michael's whole mouth with hers.

Michael pulled her toward him and she tumbled into his lap, calf scraping against the gear shift. She straddled him on her knees, denim catching on denim as their hips twisted together. She was still holding her Walther when she swept her hands up the back of his neck. The gun's cool metal barrel knifed through Michael's sweat-damp hair until he reached up to take it from her, discarding it in the empty driver's seat.

Fiona propped herself up against Michael's headrest to give him access to her cut-offs. Once they'd made it over her shoes, she did the best she could with Michael's jeans and boxers, getting them as far as his knees with the help of his raised hips. Michael managed to pull her tank top up over her head, but Fiona couldn't spare the time it would take to wrestle his shirt off his body, which was pinned under her own. She settled for sliding her hands up under the thin, damp cotton to the hot skin underneath, fingers strafing up Michael's ribs to his shoulder blades.

Michael inhaled sharply as she pushed onto him, and then groaned softly into her hair. She bit down hard on his shoulder to corral her own desire to scream—a desire borne of relief as much as pleasure, the pulse of Michael's body inside her own ending six heartsick weeks of bitter foreplay. Michael's left hand gripped a handful of her bra between her shoulders, using it as leverage to keep her close and tight; his right hand stroked her tail bone with the motion of their joined bodies, skin smacking against skin and squealing where it rubbed and chaffed against the leather.

They both froze at the sound of a slamming car door. They remained frozen as they heard another door and the low echo of voices, speaking in Spanish. Fiona couldn't make out the words over the louder sounds within the car—the deafening thud of their rapid heartbeats and the cascading echoes of their short, uneven breaths.

"What should we do?" she whispered against Michael's ear.

"Wait," he whispered back against her own ear.

Later, neither of them would be able to guess how long they waited—bodies pulsing louder and louder against the denial of release, sweat pooling everywhere their skin met. Seconds felt like hours as they listened to the shuffle of heavy boots and three male voices arguing about what to do next. Finally, they heard the car's engine rev, followed by two slamming doors and the shuffle of tires in gravel.

They just managed to wait until the tires were out of earshot before falling back into each other's bodies. Fiona used all her weight and strength to drill Michael's body into the sticky leather, her hands contracting in his wet hair while her open mouth sucked his rough cheek and the spot where his jaw met his neck. She felt Michael's throat rumble under his lips as he fought back a moan or a curse, his hands desperately clenching her bra and bare ass ahead of an equally desperate climax.

Fiona panted loudly against Michael's slippery neck, reeling with exhausted pleasure. She could feel the crinkle of his smile against her cheek, his face still buried in her hair.

"Wow," he sighed. "That was…"

"Amazing?" she finished for him.

"I was gonna say 'stupid,' but yeah."

"It can be two things."

She felt another twitch of a smile before he finally pulled his face away, fingers tucking her hair behind her ear.

"I do have one regret," she said.

"Does it involve pissing off the Columbians?"

"I wanted to see if your tan faded everywhere."

"Well now, that's just as important."

"Depends on the audience."

His tone had been light, but it acquired a note of seriousness when he said, "I wanted to see your face."

"What would I look like?"

"Confident."

"Not sexy? Not beautiful?"

"Someone told me it can be more than one thing."

She brushed her nose against his shoulder and stayed there, savoring the miracle of their aliveness.

Finally, Michael spoke.

"We should probably get out of here—before the Columbians come back."

"And here I was just starting to enjoy myself..."

Fiona wriggled back into her sticky clothes between the car and the stacks of boxes. A moment later, she kept herself tucked behind the concrete wall as she crouched to wrench open the sliding steel door. Her eyes squinted into the comparative brightness of the floodlit landscape that greeted her. The lot was deserted and undisturbed, with the notable exception of the deep indent of tire tracks in front of the locker next door, less than a dozen feet away. Fiona mimed a low whistle as she looked back at Michael, who was leaning out the open door on the driver's side, covering her with her Walther.

"C'mon," Michael said, lowering the gun. "Let's go home."

They didn't talk as they began the longer-than-usual drive back to the loft. Fiona took a circuitous route that avoided as many major intersections as possible, wanting to make absolutely sure they weren't followed back to the one place in Miami that was usually safe.

As she drove, Fiona was reminded, suddenly, of Michael's use of the word "home" when they'd left the storage facility. The fact that it hadn't initially struck her as unusual was itself unusual; as she recalled it, the word screamed at her and wouldn't stop, heralding a flood of unwanted memories. The last home she'd shared with Michael had been tumultuous, and, on occasion, deliriously happy. It had also ended in heartache.

Memories of Michael's abandonment in Dublin brought more unwelcome memories of his most recent attempt to abandon her. Even as she looked through the windshield toward the neon signs and oncoming traffic, Fiona saw Michael's face in the cabana a moment before their joined hands had almost destroyed their bodies. Michael had been smiling through his tears, an expression she'd never seen before, and hoped to never see again. Amid his charged cloud of mixed emotions, there'd been gratefulness, as well as regret. But there'd also been a deep familiarity, or, perhaps, knowingness, as though Michael had already known it would end that way—as though he'd expected her to find him there, and was apologizing for that certainty. And it wasn't just him. Fiona could clearly remember her exchange with Jesse after she'd made the decision to share Michael's death. Jesse had grabbed her arm, pleading with her not to go. Through her own tears, she'd vowed, "Screw wisdom. I belong out there with him. For better or worse." Jesse had reminded her, "It's probably gonna to be for worse." To which she'd replied, "I knew that the moment I met him."

In the present, Fiona gripped the wheel tighter against the icy tendrils that crept up her back and hugged her shoulders. The miracle of their aliveness was fading before the reality of how close they'd actually come to dying in each other's arms for the second time in as many months.

She looked across at Michael in the passenger's seat, searching for the reassurance of his customary stoicism. She was shocked to see that his eyes were closed, his head lolled back at an awkward angle. She said his name once, softly, to confirm the impossible: Michael was asleep. Fiona returned her gaze to the road, genuinely unnerved. For all the time Michael spent bemoaning her recklessness, he could be almost ludicrously blind to his own. He'd been willing to kill himself before she'd been willing to die by his side. He'd also been the one who'd initiated sex in the passenger's seat of her Genesis inside the storage locker, and the one who'd been unwilling to abandon the act with the Columbians stalking through the gravel just outside the door. And now, he was the one asleep in the same passenger's seat while she scanned the mirrors and horizons for the Columbians who may very well return to finish the job.

Not for the first time, Fiona found herself confronted with the onerous depths of Michael's faith. She knew it was because of that faith that he allowed himself to do the reckless things he sometimes did by her side, and on her behalf. Michael had trusted her to fight for him during the standoff; he'd trusted her to evade the Columbians; and now, he trusted her to get him home safely. Coming from Michael, whose own skills and grace under pressure routinely left her weak in the knees, that trust was humbling. But is was also intimidating; just as she'd worried about living up to her own choice during the standoff, Fiona worried about living up to the magnitude of what Michael continued to expect and need from her.

And yet, the standoff had also proved that her reservoirs were deeper than she ever thought possible. Michael had a way of doing that to her: of forcing her to be better and stronger, in life as well as love.

Michael woke on his own sometime before they pulled into the driveway of the loft, saving Fiona the embarrassment of waking him. Inside, she urged Michael to take the first shower. His eyes extended a tentative offer to join him, but for once, Fiona demurred, still too preoccupied by her thoughts.

She saw Michael briefly after his shower, long enough to confirm that his tan had, in fact, faded everywhere. After her own shower, she went looking for him, wrapped in a white towel with her wet, tangled hair hanging down her back.

Expecting to find Michael in bed, she was surprised to find him on the balcony, naked save the towel tied around his hips, finishing a yogurt. Lit by the residual light from inside the loft, his body was a stark white silhouette against the backdrop of the early morning darkness. Standing there, leaning over the railing and looking out toward the night, he gave the impression of a much younger man, or at least, a more innocent one; there was an almost teenage quality to his hard, lanky angles and unselfconscious slouch, bare feet flexing on the weather-beaten floor boards.

"Hey," she said softly, coming up beside him.

"Hi," Michael returned, swallowing a final spoonful of yogurt.

"You're sure it's safe out here?" Fiona asked, looking both ways and peering over the railing.

"Structurally, or…"

"You know what I mean."

Michael laid his spoon and empty yogurt cup down on the railing.

"Is there something else I should know about?"

"No, but…"

"Then relax."

Bristling slightly at the irony of Michael telling her to relax, Fiona joined him at the railing, her damp shoulder close to his dry one.

A few palm trees brushed their fronds over the railing. Beyond the trees, there wasn't much to see. In the daytime or under the light of the moon, the river and the docks were usually visible. But now, in the cloud-covered dark before the dawn, the landscape was all muddy shapes and colours swallowing distant, twinkling lights.

Fiona remembered Madeline's earlier question about Michael's mysterious thoughts while sitting on the stoop, staring at the neighbour's fence. With a spark of inspiration, she realized that, rather than guessing at Michael's thoughts, she may as well ask him.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing."

Fiona frowned, wondering why she'd thought such a simple strategy would work. Michael Westen's thoughts required more delicate extraction.

Close enough to watch him without staring, Fiona studied Michael's expression, trying to gauge his unusual mood. His lips were set loosely, and his eyes were clear, but weary. On the whole, he looked relaxed, and he looked happy, more so than she'd seen in some time. But the scar that blended with the lines around his eyes, along with the flecks of grey in the beard he still hadn't shaved, lent a wistful quality to his happiness. In the close, tired-but-happy darkness, Michael seemed like a man on the threshold of age and youth, scarred by experience, yet hopeful, despite it all.

Fiona felt guilty realizing it was exactly Michael's hope and happiness that were putting her on edge. She felt guiltier knowing that she was about to spoil his happiness by asking about it.

"Are you okay?"

Michael looked at her. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You've been acting… strangely."

"Strangely," he repeated.

"Beach walks, car sex, _balconies_ …"

"I'm _fine_ , Fi."

"And you fell asleep in the car on the way back."

"You realize I'd been awake for more than thirty hours."

"Still."

"Besides," he said, "I thought you said you had the situation under control."

"I did, but…"

She let her protest trail off into the night, frustrated by the way he'd twisted her words.

"So what are you going to do about the Columbians?" he asked after a moment.

"I'll call Sam in the morning. We'll figure something out."

"I might be able to—"

"We'll manage."

Michael nodded slowly, returning his attention to the landscape. An airplane was coming in for a landing at the airport to the east, and they both watched its flight. At first, the plane's lights were vague amid the clouds. But as the plane roared closer, the lights grew more vivid, brighter than the mostly invisible stars. The lights seemed solid and almost touchable a moment before the plane finally disappeared over their heads.

"We never talked about the standoff," Michael observed.

"You don't have to."

"But we can if you—"

"It's okay."

There was a brief pause before Michael said, "I didn't want you to die."

"I didn't want you to die alone," Fiona returned quickly.

Michael inclined his head toward hers, but avoided her eyes.

"We don't always get to make those choices," he said softly.

"But sometimes, we do."

In the silence that followed, Fiona looked down at Michael's hands where they dangled over the railing. Michael had rough hands, his fingertips thickly calloused, much like her own. She noticed that the chip in his index finger was also a bruise, as though he'd slammed it in a door. She stared at the chip and thought again about all the secrets they still kept from each other. She also thought about Michael's grey hair, the exhausted creak of his joints as he'd joined her at the kitchen table, and the vacant oblivion of his sleeping face in the seat next to hers.

Finally, she said, "Just because we can _manage_ without you, doesn't mean we don't need you, Michael."

Michael nodded absently, acknowledging her words, but not the truth behind them. Fiona realized she was going to have to work harder to make her point.

"Before you came back to Miami," she tried again, "everyone was a mess. Sam was drunk most of the time. Your mother was… _insane_ … and I was…"

She trailed off again, tongue tied by her own secrets—all the things she both did and didn't want to reveal, not quite trusting how knowing those secrets would affect Michael's faith.

"After you left Ireland," she said at last, "I did some things... things I'm not particularly proud of. But when you came back… things got better. Or at least, they started to."

She could feel Michael studying her profile, looking for her eyes. But she couldn't give him what he was looking for. Not yet.

"Two years," said Michael.

At her questioning glance, he continued.

"I hadn't had sex for two years when we first… in Miami."

Fiona finally looked at him in earnest, eyes widening. "Two… _years_?"

Michael offered a small shrug. "I was in the desert and mountains of Afghanistan for most of that time. It wasn't that hard."

"I certainly hope not…" she muttered, unable to resist the easy set-up.

She watched Michael's mouth crack into a smirk, and then a smile, and finally a laugh. It was brief, as Michael's laughter always was. But his smile remained.

Michael ran a hand over his face and chin, as though testing the reality of his own mirth.

"I think that's the first time I've _laughed_ in…"

"Less than two years. Hopefully."

His smile fell as he dropped his hand, but it lingered in his eyes in the form of the hopeful sparkle she'd seen earlier.

"I need you too, Fi."

"For sex?"

"No, I—I mean yes, but…"

His eyes wandered off along with his words. To make amends for her teasing, Fiona slid her forearm toward him, twining her fingers with his over the railing.

Michael took a breath, and tried again.

"I'm forty-three years old, Fi. After a week on a prison cot, my back was killing me. And when I'm tired, my shoulder still hurts from Jesse's bullet. There are other things, too, that keep coming back. Sometimes, my ankle gets stiff were I broke it in 1993. And there's shrapnel under my shoulder blade from 2004. They can't find it on the x-rays, but I know it's there."

Fiona pursed her lips, wishing Michael's confession had come at a different time, when she wasn't already thinking about the cracks in his once seemingly impenetrable veneer. With another pang of guilt, she wondered whether Michael had eliminated place names and details of his injuries for his benefit, or her own—whether he knew or feared the details would worry her, or even damage her own, admittedly onerous faith in him.

Sliding her calloused fingers against his, she remembered again her words from the standoff, the marriage vow she'd spoken to explain the manifestation of love in death: for better or worse.

And she made another choice.

Withdrawing her hands, Fiona stepped away from the railing and laid her right hand on Michael's back, between his shoulder blades.

"Show me," she said.

Michael hesitated for a moment before straightening his back and reaching behind him with his own right hand, maneuvering her fingers into the crease of muscle below the point of his left shoulder blade.

"Here," he said. "You can't feel it with your hand, but it's under there."

Fiona pressed the spot with her fingers, and then kissed it, lips lingering as she laid her hand flat against his back and smelled his clean skin. She felt Michael's lungs exhale under her lips, his heartbeat slow and steady under her palm.

"Does it hurt now?" she asked, lips still brushing his skin.

"No," he said quietly.

She rejoined him at the railing, letting her shoulder rest against his as they stared out together into the night.

She asked, "So are you saying you're ready for the old spies' home?"

"I'm saying I know I can't do this forever," he replied. "Not the way it's been."

"And where does that leave us?" she wondered; she hated to ask the inevitable, familiar question, wishing instead that she could fall carelessly into Michael's warmth.

"I don't know," Michael admitted. "But there's an end in sight, now. Once we deal with the people on the list…"

"Then we're going to be having this conversation all over again," she observed wearily.

"But without a gun to our heads."

Fiona thought about the blackness of the night and the bright smallness of their bodies within it.

"They'll always be a gun to our heads, Michael."

"Then I want the best tactical support by my side."

She swallowed, feeling a drop of water from her hair begin a winding journey down her neck toward the centre of her breasts.

She asked, "Did you really want to go to the beach?"

"I sort of did, actually."

"Maybe next time."

Michael's hopeful blue eyes flickered toward her. And for a moment, Fiona met and matched his hope.

She broke the moment by jostling his shoulder.

"Come to bed," she urged. "Then we can sleep and wake up and figure out who supports who at whose side."

Michael's eyes glittered along with his smile as he followed her back inside the loft.


	7. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

"—and then I said, 'that's not my daughter, that's my wife!'"

"That's when I kicked him in the shin."

"Which gave us the perfect distraction to escape."

Michael stared wide-eyed at his two best friends in the entire world, seated across from him at the bar that, over the course of the past three years, had become an unofficial headquarters.

"That sounds… interesting," he managed.

Sam smiled proudly, taking a congratulatory swig of beer. "You shoulda been there, Mikey. Me and the Irish spitfire—we make a great team."

Michael looked specifically at Fiona, who was chewing on the Bloody Mary-soaked tip of a piece of celery. To his surprise, he actually saw amusement sparkling in her eyes.

"Working with Sam has its benefits," she shrugged. "He's much better than you at making a scene in restaurants and getting hit by cars."

"You flatter me," Sam returned, only mock offended.

Michael sipped his own beer, reeling with the strangeness of it all. It didn't seem like that long ago that he'd had to physically restrain Fiona from trying to claw Sam's face off after he'd called her a terrorist and a psychopath.

"So what's the latest on the Columbians?" he asked.

"Way ahead of you, Mikey. Heard from a buddy of mine that the Ponzi guy turned on them. Cops got the Columbians on street racing, but now they're holding 'em on fraud. Ain't the justice system wonderful?"

"And what about the aspiring stock broker with the sick mother?"

"I already scoped out Ponzi guy's safe," said Fiona. "Now that the Columbians are out of the way, it should be easy to speed up that wonderful justice system."

Michael nodded as he checked his watch.

"Getting to be that time?" asked Sam.

"Afraid so," Michael replied.

"I'll walk you to your car," Fiona offered.

"Hurry back," Sam urged. "I still haven't told you about the lead I picked up when I was checkin' on the Columbians. Turns out, it's not a Ponzi scheme—it's a Ponzi _ring_."

Michael was about to reply, when he realized that Sam had been addressing Fiona, rather than himself.

"Sounds heavenly," she enthused. "I won't be a minute."

Michael exchanged a final glance with Sam, wrinkling his nose when Sam gave him a wink and a thumb's up gesture behind Fiona's back. Fiona turned quickly in Sam's direction in response to Michael's expression, but by that time, Sam was once again calmly sipping his beer, the picture of innocence.

Michael led the way to his rental car, parked across the street from Carlito's

Fiona stood beside him on the sidewalk next to the car, eyes hidden behind a pair of oversized Gucci sunglasses. Her hair was pulled back, highlighting the strong but delicate face that was so much like the rest of her, inside and out. He wished he could see her eyes, but wasn't quite ready to ask for the privilege—not in the light of day on a busy street, with so many potential spectators.

He asked, "You'll keep the loft safe while I'm gone?"

"Of course."

"I'll call if I can."

"I know."

He folded his fingers around hers, squeezing her hand against the almost unbearable compulsion to investigate the dozens of eyes he imagined boring into his back. As usual, the public display of affection stoked anxieties that were worrisome in both their intensity and their irrationality.

Fiona stoked his hand with her thumb as she said, "Give those bastards hell for us. Or I'll kick your ass."

"I will, Fi. I promise."

Reluctantly as well as gratefully, he dropped her hand, affixing her with a final, long look through his own tinted lenses before circling the car to the driver's side. Fiona remained standing on the sidewalk as he pulled away from the curb. But as he continued down the street, he watched in the rear view mirror as she bounded back across the intersection toward Carlito's, rejoining Sam and her Bloody Mary in the late afternoon sunshine. Michael experienced a brief, sudden pang of something he'd once thought he'd never feel again: homesickness.

Michael checked his watch again as he drove. He had just enough time for one final stop before his flight.

When he arrived at his mother's house, he was greeted with the smell of latex paint and a floor covered in clear plastic.

"Mom…?"

"I'm in here, Michael," his mother called from the kitchen.

Michael wandered carefully through the maze of plastic into the kitchen, where he found his mother balanced precariously atop a step ladder, paint roller in hand, cigarette jammed between her lips. She was painting the kitchen a vivid shade of tangerine orange.

"Well?" she asked, dripping paint and cigarette ash onto the plastic-covered floor as she stepped down from the ladder to greet him. "Whatd'ya think?"

"It's definitely different," he offered.

"I thought it was time for a change."

"It looks great," he amended, forcing a close-lipped smile.

His mother replaced the paint roller in the tray and brushed her hands against her paint-splattered apron before attending to her cigarette.

"So you're off?" she asked.

"For now. But I wanted to give you something, before I go."

Michael reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket—one of his own, custom suits—to retrieve the photographs he'd taken from the Dublin flat eleven years ago.

"These are from… a while ago," he said, handing the photographs to his mother. "I know you don't have any pictures of me from when I was gone, and since you seem to be changing things up around here anyway…"

His mother looked at him questioningly, but when she looked at the photographs, she smiled.

"I'll keep them safe, Michael," she promised.

"Just keep them," he said. "I don't really need them anymore."

He wanted to say more—to explain everything the photographs had been through, and that, if he didn't come back, she should give them to Fiona. He also wanted to explain the reason he didn't need them anymore—because for the the first time in a very long time, he was sure the future was going to be better than the past.

But he didn't say any of those things, knowing, somehow, that his mother would understand. Trusting his mother was a relatively new sensation, but one he was willing to explore.

The drive to the airport was quick, and uneventful, his check-in speedy thanks to his temporary government ID. Michael ended the best day he'd had in years in the sky above the Atlantic Ocean, sleeping dreamlessly against the darkened airplane window.

END

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Enjoy…? Consider leaving a review! And if you liked this one, be sure to check out my other _Burn Notice_ fics!

One little context note: In the book/film _On Her Majesty's Secret Service_ , James Bond gets married for the first (and only) time. It doesn't end well (which isn't really a spoiler if you're at all familiar with Bond), but there are some nice moments along the way. In the film version, Tracy Bond is played by Diana Rigg, aka Emma Peel of _The Avengers_ tv show, aka the queen bee of spy-fi :)


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